REBECCA PETRUCK

AMULET BOOKS
NEW YORK
All of the material contained in this book is presented only for informational and
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ISBN 978-1-4197-2141-0

Text copyright © 2018 Rebecca Petruck

Illustrations copyright © 2018 Mike Heath
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 1

THE INTRUSION OF STINKBUGS CLUMPED ON THE

ceiling in a back corner of the library, a splotch like crusty
dried mud. Every now and then, a few bugs dropped onto
the shiny green plant on the bookshelf beneath them.
Maybe in some schools, the library would have been
evacuated. In Minnesota, with the school near so many
cornfields that it might as well be planted in one, the
librarian had simply left a note on the checkout desk that
she had gone in search of a janitor. After a while, Will
Nolan’s social studies teacher went looking for them both.
Mr. Hanson probably wouldn’t have left the class of twenty-
plus seventh graders alone if it weren’t first period and
everyone still half asleep. Will was tempted to put down his
head and nap, too, but instead he opened the book he’d been
carrying around for weeks.
“Is that The American Revolution for Dummies?”
Will was a little surprised to see Eloy Herrera beside him.
Eloy was new and hadn’t talked much in the two months

1
since school started. Now he looked from Will to the dis-
tinctive yellow-and-black book Will was reading.
“Because that would be kind of awesome,” Eloy said.
Will tilted the cover so Eloy could read the title, Wres-
tling for Dummies. “Practice starts tomorrow.”
Will had been on the mats since kindergarten and was
no “dummy,” but this year was different. This year he’d be
joining the varsity and JV team, which included seventh-
through twelfth-grade students. He’d wrestle with guys a
lot older and a lot more experienced, guys who placed at
state championships. Will wanted to prove he belonged.
The book was one way to make sure he brought everything
he could to the mat.
Eloy nodded, then just kind of stood there.
“That would be kind of awesome, though,” Will agreed.
The American Revolution for Dummies would be more use-
ful for the paper Mr. Hanson had assigned than the
teacher’s insistence they use at least three references that
were actual books and not websites. Teachers were so
old-fashioned.
Eloy gestured at a seat opposite Will, and Will shrugged
his OK. He’d taken one of the tables that sat eight so he
and his best friends, Darryl and Simon, could spread out.
But Darryl had sprawled on one of the couches while Simon
poked at the stinkbugs with a metal pointer. Will would be
shocked if either of them did any actual work that morning,

2
so while Eloy sat and pulled out his books, Will rested his
chin on his hands and went back to his.
Nose in chapter six, “Wrestling in the Right Mindset,”
he read: A standard wrestling match lasts six minutes. If you
stay focused and mentally tough for five minutes and fifty-five
seconds, you’ll lose the match in the last five seconds. Will lost
focus that way all the time during matches by thinking too
much, caught up in what he should do or should have done
until it didn’t matter anymore—he was pinned.
Focused and mentally tough. That was him from now on.
Until the potted plant, the one from the stinkbug hot
zone, floated beside him.
He shouted and covered his head.
Simon waved the waxy green leaves near Will’s face
again, adding a ghostly “ooo” while Darryl laughed.
Focused and mentally tough, Will reminded himself.
Stinkbugs were bad for crops, damaging leaves, stems,
and fruit, but they didn’t hurt people; they weren’t biters or
stingers. The smell wasn’t even that bad unless the bugs felt
threatened.
“Stunts like this are why you’re not known for your good
ideas,” Will said to Simon.
Darryl, Simon, and Will had met in kindergarten and
had years of bad ideas behind them. Of course, the smack
talk would have been more effective if Will’s voice hadn’t
cracked. Stupid puberty.

3
 Darryl smirked, then slapped Will’s book closed. “Why are
you even reading that? You’re definitely making the team.”
Actually, all Will had to do to “make” the team was show
up and not quit, but Darryl’s confidence was still a boost.
“You should join, too,” Simon told Darryl. “I’d pay money
to see you in one of those bodysuits.”
Darryl reached to hook Simon into a headlock. “They’re
called ‘singlets,’ and they’re not a joke.”
Simon ducked away, the plant sprinkling stinkbugs onto
the table and carpet.
“Careful!” Will said.
Their antics drew attention from several now-less-sleepy
people nearby, including Eloy, who watched Darryl cut left
and right to block Simon against the table. But that only
made Simon laugh and duck and spin and otherwise fake
trying to get away—while still brandishing the bug-bearing
foliage.
“Will looks like a Tootsie Roll stuffed into that thing,”
Simon joked. “One of those miniature ones cheapskates
hand out at Halloween.”
Darryl knocked him back against the table for real.
“Hey!” Simon said.
Darryl got in close to Simon, chest out. “Will’s one of
us. You make fun of him, other people will think they can,
too.” He glared at the onlookers, making them drop their
gazes, and landed on Eloy, who only cocked an eyebrow

4
before cutting his eyes to Will, making Will shrug. Darryl
got touchy about stupid stuff all the time, and Simon had a
knack for setting him off without meaning to.
While Will wasn’t wild about being compared to a tiny
Tootsie Roll, it wasn’t as if Simon was wrong. The Lycra
singlets were designed so an opponent couldn’t control a
wrestler by grabbing his clothes; they were basically a tight
tank top and bicycle shorts combined into a one-piece, and
no one looked good in them.
“I was only joking,” Simon huffed.
“You’re always joking,” Darryl said through clenched
teeth.
“We’ve got other problems,” Will said to distract them
and because they did: Lots of stinkbugs were on the loose.
The library’s large windows let in a creamy, November-
morning light that glowed softly on the warm brown of the
octagonal table—and now on the gray-brown of the dozen
stinkbugs on its surface. They bobbled like weather-worn
boats on a calm sea.
Will reached for his book, carefully tilting stinkbugs off
its slippery yellow cover.
Eloy pushed back his seat, except the chair legs stuck on
the carpeted floor, and he ended up jostling the table.
“Nobody move!” Simon thrust out his hands, dislodging
a last few die-hard bugs from the plant, which he finally set
down—in front of Will.

5
 “To heck with that,” Darryl said. He yanked Wrestling for
Dummies from Will and made to smash bugs.
They’d all crushed stinkbugs before, on dares or by
accident, but usually only one at a time. Will didn’t want to
find out the nasal damage squishing a lot of them at once
could do.
Will threw himself in front of Darryl at the same time
Eloy said, “Are you crazy?!”
“No one asked you, cholo,” Darryl snapped back.
Will inhaled sharply. It felt like the world went into
slo-mo.
Darryl’s face went red, like he knew he’d crossed a line,
but his jaw squared, too—he wasn’t taking anything back.
Eloy narrowed his eyes like he planned to cross some
lines, too, but Will just looked at the new kid in his jeans
and maroon Golden Gophers T-shirt—a weird choice, since
most people wore the Vikings’ colors, not the University
of Minnesota’s. He was shorter than Will, which gave him
a nice low center of gravity, and he looked solid, kind of
shaped like a rectangle. He’d be hard to maneuver on the
mat if he ever wrestled. Will wasn’t exactly tall, but Eloy
made him feel like a beanpole.
Why the heck had Darryl called him a name like that?
Will wasn’t sure it was actually a bad name, but Darryl
sounded like he’d meant it to be.
It wasn’t as if Eloy was the only Hispanic kid in the

6
school or even in their class. A quarter, maybe a third, of
Triton students were Hispanic, enough that rooms had
Spanish signs beside the doors like the one to the Labora-
torio de Computación right behind him. As far as he knew,
none of the Hispanic kids needed the signs; they all talked
like everyone else Will knew. Mom said the signs were for
some of the parents who didn’t speak great English yet, to
make them feel more welcome at the school and get them to
attend more events and stuff.
The silence had gotten too loud. The entire class was
looking their way, and Will felt that he should say some-
thing, but his brain was stuck. Darryl was quick to lose his
temper and sometimes blurted stupid stuff he didn’t mean
the way it sounded, but Eloy didn’t know that.
“Listen,” Will said, though he didn’t have anything for
them to listen to. He was probably freaking over nothing
anyway. Darryl was a decent guy. Look at how he’d defended
Will about the wrestling singlet. And Eloy didn’t look like
he was going to cry or anything.
But it still felt like something was digging at Will’s gut.
“Uh, Will?” Simon pointed at Will’s chest.
When Will looked down, he was face-to-face with a
stinkbug.

7
 2

IT WAS REFLEX TO JERK BACK, THOUGH WILL

couldn’t escape his own chest or the stinkbug sitting on it.
“We will not cower in the face of tyranny,” he mumbled to
himself, inspired by their American Revolution homework.
“I will,” Simon said. “Stinkbugs stink!”
“Then you shouldn’t have messed with the plant,” Eloy
said.
Simon nodded. “I see your point and raise it an ‘Aha.’ ”
“Whatever,” Darryl said, raising a hand to swat the bug
off Will.
“Stop!” Will shouted. It was only a stinkbug, but if it
freaked out and sprayed, he’d be smelling skunk for hours.
Instead, Will inched an index finger toward it and slid his
nail under the front feet. He barely held in a shudder, not
wanting any sudden movements to make the bug retaliate.
“What are you doing?” Eloy whispered.
“Shh!” Darryl hissed, his breath much harder than Eloy’s

8
—and more disturbing to the bug. It darted forward, all the
way up the back of Will’s hand.
Will jerked at how fast it was, but the bug didn’t lose its
footing. The tips of its leg were scratchy, like Velcro. Will kept
his hand still as he bent his head closer to inspect the bug.
A whiff of something like cilantro and old milk
emanated from it, but not strongly. Brown-and-beige–
banded antennae twitched at Will from a too-small head
resting on extra-wide shoulders. It looked like a miniature
football player in pads. Speckles like the dimples on a golf
ball dotted its brown body and thick outer wings. Poking
from beneath those was another set of wings so pale and
thin, they were nearly see-through.
Will turned over his hand slowly, the stinkbug moving in
spurts toward his palm. It turned in a circle there, antennae
flexing.
“Maybe you’ll get superpowers like Spider-Man when he
got bitten,” Simon said.
“He doesn’t need superpowers to stink,” Darryl heckled.
“Ha-ha.” Will made an effort to grin, relieved that Darryl
had cooled off enough to talk smack. But Will still had a
stinkbug in his hand. “You’d have to eat one of these to
improve your breath,” he smack-talked back to Darryl.
“Omigosh, yes!” Simon said to Darryl. “I totally dare you
to eat a stinkbug.”

9
 Darryl’s face went red, which might have been from
anger in someone else but which Will could tell was from
embarrassment when Darryl darted looks at the people
who had gathered around or who were watching from a
safe distance. “Me? No way. Dare the Mexican. I’ve seen
stuff on TV—they eat bugs all the time.”
“Dude, I’m from Rochester,” Eloy said.
Will didn’t say anything. His tongue was frozen in shock
at hearing the friend he’d known since kindergarten talk like
that. The Mexican? What the heck was wrong with Darryl?
He knew better than to talk trash about people because
of where they came from. Heck, Eloy might not even be
Mexican—he sounded like everyone else in Minnesota—but
that wasn’t the point. Darryl hadn’t meant it as a descriptor
of where Eloy was from, and everyone around them knew
it. Including the two other Hispanic kids in their class, one
who had drifted closer to Eloy and the other who was now
practically buried in a couch.
Simon giggled the way he did when he was nervous, but
it probably seemed to Eloy that he was being laughed at, and
suddenly Will was crazy ticked at his friends. They were
making the three of them look like prejudiced jerks.
It wasn’t right. Will’s chest was hot, like he was incu-
bating an alien. He almost closed his hands into fists but
remembered the bug in time.

10
 The stinkbug.
The stinkbug that could prove at least Will wasn’t a jerk.
“You’ve been dared, Darryl, so you’d better get your bug
ready,” Will said. “’Cause I’ll go first, but you’re next.”
Then he tossed the stinkbug into his mouth.

11
 3

EVERYONE GASPED. FOR THAT MOMENT, WILL

had the power of their total attention. He was a superhero.
Except.
There was a bug in his mouth.
A stinkbug.
Alive.
And crawling around.
He had tossed it too far, practically down his throat,
and now it skittered onto a tonsil. The feeling made him
gag. He bent over, coughing to dislodge it, while the others
were frozen in shock. It was Eloy who finally tried to help
by thumping Will’s back. That’s when the bug’s defense
mechanism kicked in.
The stinkbug sprayed.
Instinct took over. Will’s tongue scraped the bug forward
to spit it out.
Instead, it squished against his teeth.
Will had crushed a stinkbug. In his mouth.

12
 An oily substance coated his tongue. Skunklike fumes
stung his throat. His mouth began to go numb, like at the
dentist, but not enough to disguise the feel of the crushed
exoskeleton, broken legs and antennae, wings, and gooey
insides.
Will spat, not caring about the carpet. Or about spread-
ing the smell, which made everyone take a step back and
Eloy say, “Careful.”
“You really did it!” Simon said, nose plugged but eyes
wide with awe.
Will tried to smile, but his throat burned and his stomach
flipped like a worm trapped on a hot sidewalk. His voice was
scratchy when he said to Darryl, “Your turn.”
“No way. It sprayed stink in your mouth!” Darryl waved
a hand in front of his nose, backing farther away.
“Stop!” Eloy said, staring at the floor, but it was too late.
Not all the stinkbugs were on the table. A lot had fallen
or crawled to the carpet near their feet.
Feet that now crushed at least a dozen stinkbugs.
A cloud of fresh fumes roiled into the air.
Will puked.

13
 4

TRITON HAD THREE TOWNS’ WORTH OF KIDS COM-

bined into a K–12 program in one building with three wings
for the elementary, middle, and high schools. So Will’s
mom, who taught kindergarten, got to him fast. And backed
away faster when the smell hit her. Fastest went her sympa-
thy when she found out he had eaten a stinkbug on purpose.
The library was evacuated.
Eloy was aired out.
Darryl and Simon were aired out and their shoes removed,
planted on the brittle November grass by the front doors.
Will was planted on the frozen grass next to the shoes.
Officially, he had been given his coat, hat, and gloves and
was asked to wait in the vestibule. But the stinkbug stink
was too strong. Whether or not the smell was only in his
head or really did fill the small space between the two sets
of doors into the school, Will couldn’t stand it. He went
outside while Mom called Dad to pick him up.
Though they hadn’t had their first snow yet, the

14
suggestion of it was all around. Windchill lifted stink
off his clothes while air crisped with dry leaves and pine
cleared his lungs. Thick frost on the sidewalk had been
defeated with salt, and the chemical crystals glinted rain-
bow sparks in the sunlight. The sight cheered him. Though
he had suffered, it had been for a good cause.
Will scraped up some of the deicing salt and sprinkled it
into Darryl’s shoes.
He wasn’t deaf. He heard how some talked about
Hispanic people sometimes, but he’d never really heard it,
not right in his face like that, and not said by one of his own
friends to someone in particular.
He spit, then swigged another gulp of orange juice
from the bottle the nurse had given him. The skunk taste
still burned his throat. He’d almost prefer the taste of
his own puke, but throwing up hadn’t made a dent. That
stinkbug spray was hard-core. Will leaned on the half wall
and opened his mouth to see if wavy lines of fumes would
shimmer in the air, but the cold only turned his breath to
huffs of smoke, a warning it was dangerous.
“Gum?”
Will whipped around too fast. His butt lost traction on
the wall, and he started to slide down its bricks, clothes
scraping but not catching enough to hold him.
Eloy was fast. He got a foot out, braced against Will’s foot
to stop his slide on the salty concrete, and he grabbed Will’s

15
coat to keep him from tipping sideways. The guy had good
reflexes, but he wouldn’t have needed them if he hadn’t sur-
prised Will in the first place.
“What are you doing here?”
“Thought you might need some gum is all,” Eloy said.
“Oh. Uh, thanks.” Will took a piece, then jerked at his
twisted-up coat and dug his underwear out of his butt,
where it had ridden up from his slide.
Then no one said anything for long enough that it got
weird.
Why had Eloy come out anyway? Will could see through
the glass doors that no one was in the halls, so it wasn’t
time for a change of class, meaning Eloy was supposed to
be in class, too. Had he skipped to talk to Will? It wasn’t like
they were friends.
Though, Will noticed, his friends hadn’t skipped class to
keep him company while he waited for the hand of doom
to crush him. Of course, they knew he wouldn’t want them
to get in trouble for his sake, and Darryl already had enough
“visits” with the principal to last through the rest of middle
school. That guy. He just couldn’t keep from mouthing off.
Will sighed another huff of cloudy breath into the air.
“Darryl doesn’t mean half the stuff he says,” Will said
aloud.
Eloy shrugged, seeming as if he really didn’t care, but
Will couldn’t believe it. Darryl might not be, like, a for-
real racist—he’d been Will’s friend forever—but what he’d

16
said—or how he’d said it, anyway—had kind of come off
like he was.
“So, uh, you’re from Rochester?” Will said. Rochester
was about forty minutes away and a pretty big city. The
Mayo Clinic was there, and it was the kind of hospital peo-
ple came to from all over the country. Will’s family didn’t
go that way often, but he loved when they did, because his
favorite restaurant was out there.
Will was trying to be nice and start a conversation to
make up for Darryl, but Eloy just gave him a look.
“What?” Will said.
“It’s fine to ask.”
“Ask what?” But Will already knew and felt squirmy,
because even if Eloy had moved to Dodge Center from
Rochester, he still wasn’t really from here.
Eloy rolled his eyes. “I was born in Minnesota, and so
was my mom, but her parents are from Honduras. And my
dad is Mexican. He came to America when he was twenty.
So I am part Mexican, and I like it. We go to Oaxaca every
year to visit my grandma.”
“Cool.” The farthest Will had ever traveled was the Black
Hills in South Dakota. It was weird to think this guy left the
country all the time like it was no big deal. Half the people
Will knew had never even left the state.
“You know eating that bug was stupid, right?” Eloy said.
“One of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen in real life.”
“Gee, thanks,” Will grumbled. It wasn’t that he’d been

17
defending Eloy, exactly. More like distracting people,
because he’d been mad at how Darryl was making things
look. But still. Eloy could give him a little credit. “People do
eat bugs, you know. I’ve seen it on TV, too.” Just as Darryl
had said, though it was mostly on those man-versus-wild
shows or the ones about weird food or places to travel. The
shows pretended they were educational, about different
cultures and stuff, but he could tell from the way the food
and people were filmed and the fact the shows were on at all
that they were really saying, “Isn’t this weird?” And it was
weird, and Will laughed and tricked his sister into watching
to gross her out. Now he was the one grossed out.
He took another swig of orange juice, even though it
clashed horribly with the mint gum Eloy had given him.
“I have, too,” Eloy said.
Will nodded and looked down the road. He lived a
five-minute drive from school. Dad should have been there
by now.
“I mean, I’ve eaten a bug, too,” Eloy said.
Will whipped his head around so fast, he might have
broken the sound barrier. “What?”
“In Oaxaca, the markets have piles of grasshoppers they
sell like popcorn. It’s no big deal.”
No big deal? “You just said that my eating that stinkbug
was stupid!”
“Because it was. The grasshoppers are raised for people

18
to eat. They’re cooked and flavored with chili powder and
lime. You ate a raw stinkbug. Who knows where that thing
had been?”
The thought nudged Will’s gag reflex, but he swallowed
it down. In a place where, when the wind blew from the
west, the smell of pig farms was so strong he hid his nose
in his shirt, he could not let his brain think about where the
bug had been.
“Anyway, uh, just wanted to be sure you were okay,” Eloy
said.
“Oh. Uh, thanks,” Will said for the second time, fidget-
ing with his coat’s zipper.
“I should head in.”
“Yeah, you’ll get busted. No bathroom break lasts this
long.”
“I’m not worried about getting busted.” Eloy fanned pre-
tend fumes away from his nose. “You stink.”
Will gave his most sarcastic smile-not-smile, but it only
made Eloy grin. As he left, Will’s fake smile melted to not
at all.
Eloy’s was only the first of many jokes and digs Will would
get about how he smelled, he realized. Will had never really
been picked on by anyone, but then again, Darryl had always
been around to defend him. Now? If Darryl didn’t say any-
thing? People would hold their noses when Will walked by.
They would clear a path for him, knocking into one another

19
to get away. They would think it was the funniest thing ever.
It wouldn’t matter that he had known them forever or that
some of them stank every day because no one had explained
deodorant to them yet. They would all laugh.
Will was the guy who’d eaten a stinkbug.
He slumped against the half wall. Staring at the ground,
he saw the skid mark on the salted sidewalk where Eloy had
shot out a leg to stop Will’s fall. The guy really did have
good reflexes, something Will wished he had more of when
he hit the wrestling mats.
Will slumped harder. Eloy had come out to check on him,
maybe to keep him company while he stank and waited for
trouble.
But Simon and Darryl hadn’t.

20
 5

“YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO EAT A STINKBUG TO KNOCK

me out with your breath,” Dad joked as Will climbed into
the truck.
The comment made Will flinch. It was almost the same
thing he’d said in the library, right before Darryl had called
Eloy the Mexican.
Dad let the truck idle. “Whoa, you OK?”
Will swallowed. “My throat kind of really hurts.”
“Then you shouldn’t have eaten a stinkbug.”
Will sank down in the seat. “I know, all right? I just . . .
Darryl said something to this guy, and I . . .” Will thumped
his knees against the glove box. “It made sense at the time,
OK?”
Dad frowned, studying him. The truck’s engine, still
idling, sounded more and more like someone mumbling
under his breath, the kind of stuff Will didn’t want to hear,
like how eating a stinkbug didn’t prove anything, and he
was an idiot for thinking it did, and what was he trying to

21
prove, anyway? If Will was driving, he would have cut off
the ignition by now.
After another few seconds that felt like eons, Dad finally
put the truck in gear and headed down the school drive, not
saying anything.
Dad was a railroad engineer, which meant he had weird
hours and could be around to pick up Will at times like this.
His route was St. Paul, Minnesota, to La Crosse, Wisconsin,
and in a regular car it would take only one and a half hours.
In a freight train, it was supposed to take about six hours,
but that was before oil started coming out of North Dakota.
In stretches with only one track, oil trains took priority,
so Dad could sit and wait for hours. Legal requirements
meant he could only drive so long before he had to rest a
minimum number of hours, so a lot of times he got stuck
in La Crosse for a day or two, meaning he could be gone
for two or three days at a time. But sometimes he got stuck
at home, which could be cool when Will wasn’t in trouble.
Except it was cool this time when Dad bypassed their
house and went to the small grocery store at the edge of
town. “I thought ice cream might help your throat.”
Normally, Will would choose a waffle cone caramel fudge
peanut mash-up, but he kind of didn’t have the energy for
it, and he remembered that Mom sometimes used vanilla
extract to get the garlic smell off her fingers when she’d
been cooking. So he chose vanilla ice cream and tomato

22
juice, because Simon had reminded him that the juice was
supposed to work for skunk spray.
Back in the truck, Dad showed him an exchange of texts
with Mom.
Dad: He picked PLAIN VANILLA.
Mom: TALK TO HIM!!!
It made Will roll his eyes but smile a little, too. His
parents were dorky sometimes, but they had his back.
Will got away with saying he wasn’t ready to talk about it
yet because he felt bad and stank. When they got home, Will
stopped by the washing machine and stripped. Everything
went in: jeans, button-down, T-shirt, underwear, socks,
sneakers, and backpack. The detergent bottle glugged as
he poured in more than a capful. He had the laundry going
almost before his bare butt goose-bumped. After dashing
into the shower, Will let out some not-allowed curse words.
With the washing machine filling up with hot water, the
shower barely trickled, and the water coming out was cold.
Mostly, Will liked his house. It was built in the ’70s
and had chocolate-brown siding on the top half and
graham-cracker-colored brick on the bottom half, so when
it snowed they called the house the s’more. It was kind of
small, especially compared to Simon’s, especially for living
with two females, but small was good when he was creeped
out at night and had to do a search of the premises, like,
to protect Mom and Hollie when Dad was gone. It wasn’t

23
that Will was scared. He wasn’t a little kid, though he felt
like one right now, shivering naked in the bathtub, waiting
for the ga-chunk-grr-grr-grr sound of the washer switching
to the churn cycle. Finally hearing it, Will slapped on the
water again, forgetting it would still be COLD.
“Language!” Dad hollered. “You’ve got soap. Use it on
your mouth.”
Will was eighty percent sure Dad didn’t mean it.
He was far less sure about other things now that he’d
had time to think about what he’d done. It wasn’t only that
at school he’d be the stinky kid. It was also that Darryl
was one of his best friends. They caught sunfish and rode
snowmobiles out near Darryl’s house. They watched scary
movies Will’s mom wouldn’t let him see—movies Darryl
turned off when Will got too creeped out and pretended he
wanted to do something else. Darryl had taught Will how to
shoot an arrow with a compound bow. And Will had seen
Darryl cry a couple of times, and not because he was injured.
Friends had each other’s back, like Will’s parents had his.
So whose back did Will have?
Darryl was one of his best friends, but it wasn’t okay for
him to talk to Eloy the way he had. Most people, probably
all they’d really seen was Will eat a stinkbug on a dare. But
Eloy and a few others knew there was more to it. Simon and
Darryl knew there was more to it, too. Though Will was mad
at Darryl for what he’d said, he was still Darryl’s friend. But

24
did Darryl think of him as his? Because all Will had seen as
he was hauled out of the library was Darryl standing amid
the circle of crushed stinkbugs, arms crossed, legs wide,
glaring red-faced at Will as if he wouldn’t mind squishing
him like a bug.
It wasn’t as if Will and Darryl had never been mad at
each other before. Once things settled down, everything
would be fine.
Will filled his mouth with shower water and spat. By this
point, it was probably all in his head, but he swore he still
had a bad taste in his mouth, and it wasn’t only stinkbug.

Will woke to Mom’s and Hollie’s voices. After his shower,

he remembered getting dressed and sitting on his bed to
tug on socks, but then he must have conked out. If Mom and
Hollie were home, he had slept for hours. He reached for his
phone, then remembered it was on the dryer, where he’d
set it when he stripped to put everything into the washer.
Simon definitely would have texted to let him know what
the fallout at school looked like. And if Darryl texted—or
didn’t—Will would know what the fallout with him looked
like, too.
Will needed his phone.
But he was kind of afraid to go out there and get it.
Partly because once he checked his phone, he would
know for sure that all the worst things he expected were

25
true. He wasn’t generally Mr. Negative, but he had eaten a
stinkbug. Stunk up the library. And, for bonus points: puked.
He probably hadn’t even imagined the worst things yet.
Partly it was because Hollie was out there. The thing
with having a sister only one year older was that she was
in the same school. Well, everyone from three towns was
in the same school. Triton kept the elementary, middle,
and high school students pretty separate, but the middle
school was only one long hall, so Hollie was around all the
time, and everyone knew he was her brother. There was no
way someone, a bunch of someones, hadn’t already told her
various versions of what had happened. She was probably
waiting right outside his door to tell him how bad it was
and make fun of him. Heck, he was surprised she hadn’t
barged in already.
And the last “partly” was because Mom was out there,
too. It wasn’t that she was mean, but she usually found
the one thing to say to make him feel the crappiest. She
didn’t try to make him feel bad, exactly; she was just always
teaching, wanting him to learn from his mistakes. He hated
it. It was much easier when Dad got mad and yelled at him
to shovel snow off the sidewalk or clean the gutters or
whatever.
The worst part was, Mom was always right. Just once
Will would love to not learn anything, to just be grounded
and gripe with his friends about it—the end.

26
 He heaved a giant sigh, then heaved his butt off the bed.
Hollie was not waiting outside his door, and that inspired
him to try to sneak past the kitchen, but there was no
sneaking in their house. It was a simple rectangle with three
bedrooms and a bathroom in one half, the living room and
kitchen in the other, with the small alcove for the washer
and dryer on the far side leading to the one-car garage no
one ever parked a car in.
“How you feeling, bud?” Dad asked, essentially ratting
out Will before he’d barely cleared his bedroom door.
“I told them what happened,” Hollie said.
Will squinted at her. It was confusing sometimes,
because she wore a lot of pink workout gear, which seemed
so girly, as if she didn’t really work out, but he knew she
busted her hump at volleyball. He’d been to her games. She
hadn’t showered yet, and since that was usually the first
thing she did when she got home from practice, making the
house smell like her fruity, flowery soaps and lotions, she
must have spent all her time telling Mom and Dad all the
crap she’d heard at school. The betrayal stung, but who was
he to complain? Darryl probably felt the same way.
“Mom was the first one they called,” Will pointed out,
so she had known what happened and had obviously told
Dad. All Hollie would have to add were whatever gory
details his social studies class might have passed along.
She sighed as if he were Mr. Stupid. “About the new kid.”

27
 “Eloy didn’t do anything.” Maybe Will hadn’t woken up
all the way, because he wasn’t sure what she was getting at.
Hollie exchanged one of those looks with Mom that
meant something in girl language.
“I heard from someone that maybe Darryl was being a
jerk, and—”
“Darryl’s not a jerk!” Will burst out before Hollie finished
talking.
“I said, ‘being a jerk,’ ” Hollie repeated, but he barely
heard her.
“Is that what people are saying?” Holy crap, it was worse
than he thought. He ran for the dryer and his phone, but it
wasn’t there. “Hey!”
“No phone, and you’re grounded for two weeks,” Mom
said.
“That’s forever! And I was only trying to help someone!”
“Whether or not you were trying to help, your stinkbug
stunt got the library shut down.”
The library was shut down? He thunked into a seat at the
kitchen table. This was seriously bad on a whole different
level than he’d expected. Though he felt a tinge of injustice
about having the library thing pinned on him—he hadn’t
been the one who started messing with the stinkbugs—it
was outweighed by the idea that people might be saying
bad things about Darryl. Will couldn’t let that stand. Darryl
would never let that stand if the talk was about Will.
He had to see what Simon had texted him.

28
 “Please just let me check my phone one time,” Will pleaded.
“I need to know what’s happening.”
“It doesn’t matter what other people might think,” Mom
said quietly, putting a hand on his arm as if that was sup-
posed to reassure him. Why did parents always say stupid
stuff like that? Of course it mattered what other people
thought. He had to spend most of his day with them every
day until he graduated high school!
“Anyway, all they’re really talking about is you eating a
bug,” Hollie said.
“Whatever Darryl did or didn’t say,” Mom said, “I’m glad
you tried to show him that being prejudiced isn’t OK.”
Ick. Will was not “a good role model.” He ate a bug! And
Darryl would hate, as in detest, the idea of needing to be
taught how to be a decent person by anyone, let alone Will.
He put his head on the table.
“It’s not that bad, dork-face,” Hollie said, giving him a pat
on the back. He supposed she was being nice, but it might as
well have been trying to light a match in front of a tornado.
Then he thought of something else: The first day of
wrestling was tomorrow, and it was one hundred percent
guaranteed the high school guys had heard he’d eaten a
stinkbug and puked. So much for starting off on the right
foot.
Mom said more stuff, but Will’s ears buzzed. He didn’t
really hear anything until “I want you to really think about
better ways you could’ve handled the situation.”

29
 As if he wasn’t already. He should have stayed out of the
whole thing. Eloy looked like someone who could take care
of himself. And it wasn’t that Darryl and Simon were bul-
lies. They were just being stupid. Will had overreacted, and
look what it had gotten him: grounded, phone taken away,
probably the whole school making fun of him, even guys
from the high school hearing about it. Wrestling practice
those first two weeks was hard enough without knowing all
the older guys were laughing at him. And Coach. Coach Van
Beek was his health and P.E. teacher. He’d definitely heard
about the stinkbug. Would he think Will was too stupid to
be on his wrestling team now?
The day had started so normal. But it had gotten chased
around the mat and pinned like a lightweight taken down
by a heavyweight.

30